


Data Analysis

by CantStopImagining



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff, kind of just on the edge of smut oops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 16:39:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7722067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CantStopImagining/pseuds/CantStopImagining
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Looking at Erin is like looking directly into the center of an explosion. Or the sun. Or something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Data Analysis

**Author's Note:**

> I think I've lost control of my life.

It feels a lot like running a very complicated experiment. The kind that has satisfying results in the end, that makes your heart rate speed up and skip in time with the tiny explosions, that leaves you with stars dancing in front of your eyes if you sit too close.

Looking at Erin is like looking directly into the center of an explosion. Or the sun. Or something.

Holtzmann runs her fingers down the curve of her side, from the top of her shoulder, over her side and her hip and her long, tan legs and right down to her ankle, and Erin shifts, watching her but not saying anything. She thinks maybe Erin recognises a hypothesis when she sees one, understands better than most the act of data collection. When Holtzmann presses her lips to that tender spot between her throat and her shoulder, she gasps, fingers gripping around blonde curls and eyes slipping shut, and Holtz adds it to the list.

She likes to take things apart and put them back together again. She likes to figure out how things work, and then make them work better. 

Erin is an outlier. She’s taken her apart countless times, but she can’t seem to find a margin for improvement. Yet, her hands continue to undo.

She thought, at first, that that might have been the depth of her interest. Erin, in her tightly buttoned blouses and her frumpy skirts and her ridiculous, impractical shoes, needed to be taken apart. The thought of unravelling her, of ripping at those buttons and opening her out, drove Holtz wild for the first few weeks.

As time goes by, it becomes more than that and she knew it before she’d even put her hands on her for the first time (‘do you know your iron level?’ she’d joked, again, and Erin had moaned against her, a single ‘please’ whispered so close to Holtzmann’s ear that it made her shudder). The feeling in the pit of her stomach when she hears Erin’s laugh tells her it’s different. She knows before she even kisses her that she’d go to the ends of the earth to make sure she never stops seeing Erin’s smile, or that flush that creeps up from her chest into her cheeks. She pushes and pulls and nudges and chases her not for the thrill it gives her, but because she can’t stop herself. Maybe it’s a type of addiction, or maybe she’s drawn to her like a magnetic pull, but when they finally fall together, it feels like the only possible conclusion.

(Erin squirms and bucks and gasps. Her hair sticks to her face, Holtzmann’s name getting lost in a throaty breath, fingers curled deep into the sheets until her knuckles are white. Holtz watches at her, tries to memorize the curve of her body, the pattern of her breathing, never wanting to forget a second of it).

They eat ice cream in bed on a hot summer morning, and Erin’s babbling about research articles and publications, and Holtzmann is suddenly struck by this warmth in her chest. She’s watching Erin closely, watching her tongue sweeping carefully at the quickly melting ice cream, continuing to talk with her mouthful, her eyebrows knitted, and it hits Holtzmann like a ton of bricks. She’s felt it building up inside of her for weeks, months even, this feeling that she doesn’t know how to explain or describe, that isn’t like anything she’s ever had before. Erin catches her eye, realises she isn’t listening, notices her staring, and glances down at her hands, obviously self-conscious. Holtzmann’s mouth is dry. Her spoon is halfway between her mouth and the ice cream tub, and she realises she’s not even eaten any. She can’t drag her eyes away from Erin long enough to try a mouthful.

“I love you,” she says, trying the words out.

Erin stares at her. Calculations build in Holtzmann’s head. She contemplates laughing, feeling suddenly uneasy under Erin’s unwavering stare, but realises that will only make things worse.

“What?” Erin breathes, finally. It feels like a lifetime has passed.

“I’ve been running calculations and building data and…” Holtzmann pauses, tongue darting out to wet her lips, “I think I might have fallen in love with you.”

Erin’s teeth sink into her bottom lip, that same point that is still raw from the night before, and her mouth twitches slowly into a smile. Maybe not quite the reaction Holtz was going for, but at least she isn’t freaking out.

“Now’s the part where you go ‘oh, boy, me too’ and we re-enact last night, calling in sick to work to stay in bed all day,” Holtzmann says, suddenly feeling very exposed and nervous, things she isn’t at all used to. She covers it with a smirk, flexing her hands nervously in a way that comes across a lot more sexually than she intended. Not that she minds.

“I’ve told you before, calling in sick is never going to work. They know. We haven’t been subtle… at all. They both know, Holtz.”

Holtzmann sits there silently, going over the data and trying not to say something stupid. When she gets uncomfortable, she gets word diarrhoea, her weird ticks growing ten times worse, and whilst Erin’s probably seen some of the worst of it, she’s still convinced one day she’ll realise she’s made a mistake, and leave. Nice, pretty, _normal_ women like Erin don’t stick around.

“You were joking, right?” Erin says, and she’s stopped eating the ice cream, discarded it on the bedside table. Holtzmann fixes her eyes to watching the liquid fall from the spoon. Drip, drip, drip, “Holtz?”

“About skipping work? Yes.”

“About… the other thing.”

“Oh,” Holtzmann swallows, working her jaw, “I. Yes.”

Erin’s face softens, and she looks for a second just like she did that first time she watched Holtzmann dance, awkward and unsure where to look. Only, naked. 

“You weren’t joking, were you?” she whispers.

“Uh… no. I wasn’t.”

Erin smiles shyly at her, crawling up the bed to reach where she’s perched on the end. She lifts her hands to her face, cupping her jaw and searching her eyes, and Holtzmann feels like she’s under deep scrutiny, her heart suddenly pounding in her chest. She files it away, the feeling of Erin’s fingers, sticky with ice-cream touching their away along her face, into her hair, the warmth of her mouth, juxtapositioned with her cold, sweet tongue. It’s only when she sinks into the kiss, letting herself relax against Erin’s body, that she feels the dampness of her cheeks and realises it isn’t perspiration. Erin’s crying.

Holtzmann draws back, frowns deeply, wiping away the tears.

“Oh god, I knew I was going to cry,” Erin mumbles, trying to turn away from her in embarrassment, “I’m such a mess.”

“My mess,” Holtzmann says, softly, trying to stop her from pawing at her own face.

“I just never thought…” she trails off, the corners of her lips turning up into a smile, her eyes still filled with tears, “this is so embarrassing.”

“No one has ever said it before?” Holtzmann asks, feeling a pang in her chest when Erin shakes her head. She draws her closer.

“I mean my mom and dad… when they weren’t sending me to therapy or telling me I was crazy… and you know, Abby… but this is…” she sighs, before settling on: “different.”

Pressing a kiss to her forehead, Holtzmann smiles down at her, “for what it’s worth, I’ve never said it before, either. Or felt it.”

Erin regards her for a long moment, Holtzmann’s hands smoothing out her hair and holding her close, and she scrunches her face up, somewhere between a laugh and something else. Holtzmann stores that away, too, though it’s familiar to her already.

“Say it again?” Erin asks, her breath catching.

Holtzmann grins at her, “I love you, Erin Gilbert.”

Erin’s face flushes, but a smile tears across her face, which Holtzmann quickly leans in to kiss, only pausing to tell her she loves her again, and then again and and again and again, peppering soft kisses between her words until she’s pushed Erin back into the pillows, her lazy kisses moving away from her mouth and along her throat, down her body. Erin stops her before she goes too far away, drawing her back up towards her face and gazing deeply into her eyes, their faces inches apart.

“I love you, too.”


End file.
